In the #MeToo Era, Feminist Punk is Still a Powerful Weapon

Everything I know about feminism, I learned from punk rock.

Well, that’s not entirely true, a lot came from reading Simone de Beauvoir and Emma Goldman, and talking with strong women in my life who helped me understand the privileged position I hold as a male in my culture. But the importance of sexual equality, the need to dismantle patriarchy, these are values I hold, values I derived from punk rock.

The enduring #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment and assault (and the numerous revelations about so many well-known predatory men), has left me with a range of complex emotions. While listening to these conversations, I’ve struggled with feelings of helplessness. But I think the best thing I can do as a man is to listen to what women are trying to say, and maybe amplify a few voices.

With about 20 years of experience in various punk, hardcore and metal scenes throughout the United States, I realize I do have something to add, a lesson I’ve learned: Feminist messaging in extreme music has been, and continues to be, a prophylactic and necessary measure to combat sexual harassment and assault of women.

Shawna Potter of War on Women. Photo from Cody Ganzer.

The Baltimore punk band War on Women is one of today’s most outspoken feminist groups, and I’m a huge fan. The band comprises two men and two women, and they really rock the hell out of a live show (that’s what this is all about, after all). War on Women’s message is both empowering (as hardcore should be) and challenging (as punk rock and metal should be).

“We started very intentionally,” singer Shawna Potter said in a recent video interview with the music site Noisey. “We knew we wanted to make a feminist band, and we wanted to talk about things that matter… really explicitly and overtly.”

War on Women is an easy target — they are openly feminist social justice warriors who challenge patriarchy and sing with righteous indignation about rape culture, street harassment, and the infringements upon reproductive rights. Whenever strong and talented women enter a male-dominated space and stake a claim to it, there is a backlash from men, and it’s the same damn thing in the punk scene. The backlash against War on Women has been both disheartening and boringly predictable.

In an essay she wrote for Noisey, singer Shawna Potter tells the story of some of the vitriolic bullshit that happened while on the Vans Warped Tour this year. When a woman holding up a sign that said “Punk shouldn’t be predatory,” showed up at a set from the Boston band The Dickies, a member of the band (known for saying disgusting things about young women), went on an unhinged, threatening rant. Internet storms erupted, and unfortunately The Dickies found their fair share of men coming to their defense and lecturing War on Women and other feminist punk activists to, basically, shut up and leave the punk scene to the boys.

Photo from Cody Ganzer.

To these reactions, Potter has a simple message, which she told Noisey: “If you don’t like our band, that's fine. End sexism and I’ll literally have nothing to sing about.”

But sexism is, and has historically been, a serious issue in punk music. There are far too many stories of abusive men demeaning, harassing, assaulting, and raping women. I’ve seen men grope women at punk shows and take advantage of women who were drunk. One of the only times in my life I ever threw the first punch was at a man assaulting a woman at a punk show. Sexual harassment and assault in punk scenes happens too often, unfortunately, but it can be reduced.

The night before Trump’s inauguration, I attended a show by the British punk/folk songwriter Frank Turner. He said that the most beautiful thing about punk rock is that it allows people to create their own culture, to set their own values. Smashing sexism, stopping sexual violence, these are values, as long as the people within the culture claim them.

I grew up going to every Warped Tour to see bands like Bad Religion, Rancid, Dropkick Murphys, but haven’t been to one in years, and I was skeptical of War on Women’s decision to go on the tour, given its reputation for being a haven of drunken bros and teenage girls. But as I followed War on Women’s statements on social media, I realized the band saw the tour as an opportunity to reach people who might not otherwise be exposed to feminist ideas. Most punk, hardcore and metal shows are dominated by men, and the shows where women match the men in number are rare. War on Women made the most of this opportunity by organizing a campaign called “Safer Scenes.” The band described this campaign as a means of formulating proactive, preventative solutions to sexual harassment and assault that takes place in concerts and festival atmospheres.

“We want to help rid the Warped Tour of the ugliness it’s been plagued with over the years, and to do that we must shine a light on it,” Potter wrote. The idea was to train band members and concertgoers in bystander intervention, to help empower not only would-be victims of sexual harassment and assault but everyone else around to refuse to tolerate sexually abusive behavior.

I have to quickly highlight another example of punk as a weapon against sexual assault, and it comes from a Massachusetts band called Goolagoon. They are an insane amount of fun — after all it’s a Spongebob Squarepants-themed punk/grind band. I saw them play last year at a metal festival in Baltimore, and the fury of their live performance was incredible. The frontwoman, who goes only by Lily, is dynamic singer with an engaging stage presence, and she doesn’t mince her words when it comes to sexual violence.

Southern-California hardcore punk band Abjection. Credit: Cody Ganzer 

As she started off the band’s song “Life of Crime” (from their blistering record of the same name) Lily gripped the microphone and screamed at the top of her lungs: “To every man who’s ever sexually terrorized women: WE ARE NOT YOUR FUCKING PROPERTY! FUCK! RIGHT! OFF!” The band then goes into a brutal 50-second assault full of speedy riffs contrasted against slow, heavy noise. The crowd, myself included, was blown away and the band received loud applause from an audience composed almost entirely of men.

“PRO-FEMINIST” is written in block letters on the cover of Propagandhi’s album, Less Talk, More Rock. As an angry teenage boy (surrounded by a lot of other angry teenage boys), the loudly pro-feminist position of the band jumped out at me. I was 13 when that album came out and I bought it largely because the feminist message struck me as empowering and deserving of respect.

Propagandhi at DC's Rock & Roll Hotel - 2017

This band (one of my all-time favorites) has always been outspoken and in-your-face. I’ve supported the band for years, and saw them play a few weeks ago. They played flawlessly to an insane, excited, diverse crowd of fans, and their new album Victory Lap is a pristine and empowering if you’re feeling depressed in the Trump era.

In a recent interview on Canadian radio, Propagandhi frontman Chris Hannah talked about the “frat boy” punk scene culture that he was speaking out against when the band released Less Talk. “We made a conscious decision, the only conscious decision we ever made, to make sure people knew exactly what we were about, and we put out that record Less Talk, More Rock, which actually said ‘Gay-Positive, Pro-Feminist’ on the cover, and our record sales plummeted, and none of those jocks were at our shows anymore,” Hannah said.

He calls taking that stance “career suicide,” but the album (and the band) has stood the test of time. And the punk scene’s progressive shift has proven that, for every guy who got pissed and left when a band took a pro-feminist stance, more open-minded punks took their place. More women filled that space.

Of course, feminist punk is nothing new. As anyone who grew up in the 70s and 80s knows, plenty of momentous feminist punk bands have been sounding these alarms since before I was born. (The music magazine Pitchfork released a great discography of feminist punk classics, which you can check out here. I think it’s an awesome list.)

For me, Crass’ “Penis Envy” is a classic feminist punk record, and one of my favorite punk albums of all time. Musically astringent, raw and chaotic, with intense vocals from Eve Libertine and Joy De Vivre, and lyrics immersed in feminism and anarcho-politics. It’s as powerful today as it was in 1981. Bikini Kill, X-Ray Spex, Vice Squad, the Slits, even pre-punk rockers like Patti Smith — this movement goes way back. But feminist punk culture is still alive and well. And that’s a great thing, because it is necessary, effective, and a whole lot of fun, too. 

What drew me to punk and metal scenes was the welcoming atmosphere, as strange as that may sound considering how loud and abrasive the music can be. I found punk shows to be spaces where people from all backgrounds could find other misfits and forget their problems while listening to some kick-ass music. Punk hasn’t died and won’t anytime soon, young men are being attracted to punk scenes for the first time right now. My hope is that they, like me, will be introduced to powerful feminist messages at a young age. And I hope that fighting sexism, misogyny and sexual violence will continue to be a value that many punk rockers hold.

This post first appeared on the site Good Men Project.

Built to Last: How a Jersey Kid in Ukraine Found Strength in NY Hardcore

Growing up on the Jersey Shore, I became aware of New York hardcore quite early. There were thriving music scenes all over New Jersey (Asbury Park was just a few beach towns north), and I was surrounded by all sorts of punk-related influences. But, at that point in my life, I found the stuff coming out of New York to be a bit too gritty, too intense.

Albums from Agnostic Front, Sick of it All, Warzone and others intrigued me, but I couldn’t quite relate to the anger, the desperation, the pain. Punk and ska seemed more appropriate. After all, I was a happy-go-lucky surfer kid from a beach bum town with a loving, caring family — I didn’t need hardcore anthems about resilience and persistence in the face of crisis.

That all changed after I moved to Kyiv, Ukraine, in the mid-90s.

“Will you stay with those who will only drag you down? Or do you cut the ties and open yourself and hold your moral ground?”

I was a young teenager, but I didn’t have to look for trouble — it looked for me. Drunk adults trying to pick fights. Gangs of Ukrainian teenagers trying to rob me for anything of value. Neo-Nazi scum with no patience for Americans. Cops looking to snatch up Westerners and shake them down for cash. Mafia types with short tempers, strutting around like they owned the streets. 

I saw a man’s body face down in an apartment complex with his throat slit, the floor puddled with blood. I saw homeless people with rotting sores, packs of wild dogs roaming the streets, a drunk man get his skull crushed by a car.

It frightened the shit out of me. At the time, I didn’t have the coping mechanisms I needed to process it all.

“Side by side we wave the flag of discontent and faith… We stand defiant, we can’t be silent. We might never change the world, at least we’ve had our say. The wheel’s been set in motion as we slowly chip away.”

So I bought a pair of brass knuckles and a cache of switchblades, and I made a pact with myself that I wouldn’t leave the house without at least one knife (preferably two in case I lost the first.) At Gidropark, a dystopian fairgrounds located on an island in the Dnipr River, I found a sand dune where people had constructed a crazy outdoor gym. I began bench-pressing tank treads, curling pipes, deadlifting old truck tires. When I got jumped or chased by Ukrainian dudes calling me a faggot, I was always outnumbered. But at least I could up my odds.

“Brother, I’ll always look out for you… Sister, we’ll brave the outside world…”

To pass time, I would frequently buy cheap Ukrainian cigarettes and beer and roam the streets of Kyiv, looking for places to explore or hunker down. One afternoon I found a sketchy-looking basement with a Slayer poster in a cracked window. Inside, the light was on, and I saw a bunch of music, so I assumed it was some primitive Ukrainian version of a record store. I took a deep breath and entered.

The guy behind the small counter had a cigarette in his mouth, tattoos on his hands, no hair on his head. He said something to me but I just smiled and nodded, hoping he wouldn’t realize I was an American. Most of the albums were thrash metal or bootleg tapes of Michael Jackson and other American pop stars. But one cassette jumped out at me with its simple design of an old, rusty American truck and a dragon logo on the front. Sick of it All’s Built to Last was the first New York hardcore album I purchased, and I paid that scary dude a handful of Ukrainian koupons for it without saying a word. 

“When it’s us versus them, you can always count on me.”

I ran that cassette tape into the fucking ground. Now I could relate to NYHC. Now I understood what these motherfuckers were yelling about. Perseverance, pride, strength, yes, but also devotion, honor, friendship. I didn’t have many friends except for my younger brother, but Sick of It All sang about unity, self-respect, resilience. I needed all of these things in my life.

As a lonely American teenager in Ukraine, those anthems gave me inspiration and strength. The intensity of the sound, the power of the lyrics, the positive aesthetic, it empowered me to spit in the face of chaos and uncertainty. I was still scared as shit, but I told myself I could refuse to let fear control me. 

My brother, three years younger, was in similar situations, and as we listened to the music together, I saw it take a similar toll in his mind. He soon let my sister give him a Mohawk and — holy shit! — random Ukrainian dudes lost their minds over that.

Today, to be honest, this album is not one of my favorite hardcore albums, although I think it holds up quite well. But when it comes to naming the album that has had the most significant impact on my life? No question: Built to Last.

“You’re not in this all alone, just look around and you’ll see. The answer’s right before your eyes. I’m here for you, and you for me… True friends will always be there.”

I made it back to the States after high school and moved to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. I was broke, working at Kinko’s, and paying my way through college. At night I slept in a basement that cost me $500 a month (under the table, of course) and frequently flooded with sewage. What little cash I had I spent going to CBGBs to watch bands like Agnostic Front, TSOL, Youth Brigade, Sham 69. 

When I heard Sick of It All was playing at CBGBs, I told my boss at Kinko’s I got food poisoning that left me suffering from “violent diarrhea.” She didn’t ask any follow-up questions. Fuck yeah — I had the night off.

Per usual, CBGBs was packed and sweaty as hell. And Sick of It All killed it. The chaos of the crowd combined with the precision of the music, the insanity of Pete Koller’s guitar jumps, and the sincerity of Lou Koller’s belted lyrics. And when they played the song “Built to Last,” of course I thought back to Ukraine in the 90s. 

I had made it out, relatively unscathed, and I was at the home of New York hardcore, watching the band that had helped me power through.

I screamed with Lou until I lost my voice.

Built to Last turned 20 years old this year. And, fuck, I feel old. When I realized the album was turning 20, I had an intense flashback to the specific time and place where I bought that tape. It had been a few years, but I listened to the album and the memories came flooding back in visceral fashion. The music that had inspired me as a 13-year-old still had power.

And you know the best thing about this album and countless other NYHC albums like it? Scared misfit kids from all over the world have stories just like mine.

Long live NYHC.

Screw the Gendered Wine Binary

A few years ago, I was tasting through a bunch of Chardonnays with a winemaker in Sonoma. As is unfortunately the case all too often at trade tastings like this one, no women were present. While tasting through a particularly oaky and creamy Chardonnay, the winemaker admitted he didn’t expect us to like it. He quipped, “I call this my cougar juice.” We all laughed, myself included.

I think about writing a lot. I think about wine a lot. So, I think a lot about how we talk about wine. And, lately, I find myself wondering why people still insert lame, outdated gender roles into the discussion.

For years I’ve heard men refer to wines with higher alcohol and riper fruit as being “slutty.” This comment is almost always made by a man (frequently dripping with disdain) who fancies his palate too refined for floozy juice. A search through a popular internet database of wine tasting notes reveals hundreds of references to a wine being “slutty,” and I’ve heard it used more times than I can remember.

I’ve heard a common refrain from some people in the wine trade that Cabernet (usually a more structured and tannic wine) is the woman you marry, while Pinot Noir (usually a more exotic but temperamental wine) is the woman you take to bed. This kind of talk strikes me as, well, pathetic. It speaks to a sense of male possessiveness and assumed superiority over women. From the nerdy/hot redhead girl next door to Marilyn Monroe, comparing a wine to women is so common in male-dominated wine circles that it’s not only gendered bullshit, it’s a boring cliché. It’s not clever. So why is it still a thing?

I like to think that some (or even most) gendered comments about wine are not made with the conscious decision to offend or denigrate women. Well-aged Barolo or Burgundy from great vintages is frequently described as elegant and feminine, and this is meant as a great compliment. In some sense, I understand how those words may make sense in describing fine wine, something so profoundly difficult to describe. I frequently refer to young Cabernet as being muscular or strong, and aged wines as being restrained, smooth and elegant. By attaching traditional gender stereotypes to wine, we’re perpetuating an outdated dichotomy. And we’re further complicating and sexualizing something that is already unnecessarily complicated and sexualized. 

Traditional gendered discussion of who drinks what has been changing, and there is certainly progress being made in breaking down some of these odd barriers. Last year, for example, the term “brosé” made the rounds in some popular publications. This term was used to refer to millennial men (bros) who drink rosé, a pink wine. This lighter, fresher, and sometimes sweeter wine is made from red grapes, but it is shades of pink in the glass. For decades (think white Zinfandel), rosé was stereotyped as a girly drink. The tired trope that pink wine is for the girls has always been bullshit, and I penned a piece last year encouraging men skeptical of rosé to “drink the pink.” Good news, dudes: there is no scientific study linking the consumption of pink, bubbly or sweet wine and smaller penis size. 

“Brosé,” like all gendered wine trend terms, has become a tired trope. But as it was catching on, Chloe Wyma discussed the trend in a well-written and insightful piece for GQ: “the rosé bro is inaugurating a freer, more egalitarian world of gender-fluid beverage consumption.” And that’s a good thing. If there’s a gender stereotype out there somewhere, I want to smash it, so I fully support this trend.

However, while I have been a huge supporter of the dry rosé movement for many years, I don’t see the need to pop my collar, gather around with a bunch of dudes and toast to open-minded, gender-nonconforming consumption habits. Dry rosé wine is fucking amazing. It is no revolutionary act for a man to drink pink wine in celebratory fashion. I’ve never felt self-conscious about drinking rosé and I don’t think anyone else should either.


Drink our canned wine, ladies! (Yoga pants/toned butts not included.)
Credit: Lila Wines PR image

Let me take a moment to address any men reading this who may be thinking, “Great, another person is telling me I have to be politically correct about shit. Now I have to be sensitive to chicks when I talk about booze? So lame, bro.” To be clear: you can talk about booze in any way you damn well please. Wine marketers and beverage PR folks are constantly re-mastering the gendered beverage binary, and I don’t think they’re letting up any time soon. (See: pink-labeled “Bitch” wines; the successful “Skinny Girl” brand; marketing gimmicks from “Little Black Dress”, Lila Wines, etc., etc.,)
 
On some level, I understand the approach wine marketers take when they try to target specific consumers with gender-based marketing. They’re trying to make a buck off a bottle (or box, or can) of wine, an object that has been gendered and sexualized for hundreds of years. I get it. But it’s tired. Very, very tired.

In an excellent piece for Punch Drink, Zachary Sussman laments that gender-based wine marketing is still so commonplace. “I just can’t figure out why this kind of type-casting is still happening in 2016.” And considering that all of the most face-palm-inducing marketing gimmicks are aimed at women, Sussman asks: “How is it advantageous to reduce the female drinkers they’re courting to the most generic lifestyle magazine stereotypes?” I don’t know, man. I don’t know.

To ferment my argument: Gendering and sexualizing our conversation about wine and alcoholic beverages is a) lazy; b) frequently dismissive of women; and 3) it’s an increasingly inaccurate way of discussing the subject.

When you actually dig into a typically gendered notion of wine consumption, you find it is likely outdated and frequently inaccurate. (Hell, I sip more California Chardonnay “cougar juice” than almost any woman I’ve ever met.) A 2012 study from Taylor & Francis Research group looked at wine consumption between 155 men and 150 women, focusing on how men and women consumed wine during various types of occasions. The results? Men and women consumed wine similarly in 16 out of the 22.

Bros, canned wine is for chicks. Solo cups for you.
Credit: Lila Wines PR image

Another aspect of the gendered/sexualized conversation about wine: it is frequently a one-way street. This dynamic is sometimes perpetuated by women, but, in my experience, not as frequently. When the woman I’m with orders a burly Cabernet, I’ve never heard her discuss her choice in “masculine” terms. And when a woman uncorks a young Bandol, do her girlfriends joke about her drink being butch or manly? 

I asked my friend Alison Marriott (who runs the wine consulting firm Bon Vivant) what she thought about this. “In all aspects of life I don’t find many women discussing or objectifying men in the same way that women are objectified by men,” she said. “I think that language is often a natural extension of one’s temperament, paradigms and belief system regarding gender and sex. This isn’t restricted to describing wines.”

Of course this phenomenon isn’t unique to wine. But when we talk about wine, we should remember what wine is. Wine is an historic agricultural product that contains alcohol, is delicious, and is intended to provide pleasure.

Why load that down with the weight of gender stereotypes?

******
I spent about six months batting this post around, and, in the meantime, several other voices have chimed in on the broad topic of wine and gender. For further reading check out "On Wine and Gender: Chambolle = Feminine. But Why?" by Jonathan Lipsmeyer, and "She Said, He Said" by Andrea Frost.

What Dads Can Learn from Zebra Finches

I have a new essay up on The Good Men Project about how birds can teach us lessons in co-parenting.


Check it out here: "What Dads Can Learn From Zebra Finches, Squawks And All"

Destigmatizing Medication: How Psychiatric Medicine Helped Me Survive

I have a new essay up on The Good Men Project that focuses on medication for mental illness.

Check it out by clicking on this link.

Thanks so much!

- Isaac

New Essay on Losing My Faith on the Mission Field

I have a new essay up on The Good Men Project about coming of age on the mission field.

It was while my parents were on missionary duty in Europe that I began to embrace my skepticism and disbelief.


I tell the full story here. Thanks for reading!

New Essay: I Pray My Daughter Never Believes in Sin

I have a new essay up on The Good Men Project today called "I Pray My Daughter Never Believes in Sin."

I mean no offense to anyone of any religious persuasion, but I've been thinking a lot about what kind of values I want to teach my daughter, and what kind of ideas I hope she rejects. In this piece, I try to explain my hopes of raising my daughter with a morality based in empathy and human dignity.

Thanks for stopping by this blog, and I hope you'll check out the piece. Cheers!

American Wino: Dan Dunn's Wine-Soaked Road Trip

You really don’t want to trade tales with Dan Dunn. His stories will kick your stories’ asses, no problem.

I hung around with Dan for a few days in Napa and Sonoma last year. After sharing some wine and some stories I realized Dan is fucking cool guy, and he can rattle off a hilarious story with ease.

You know Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in the World? Well, Dan is buddies with the real-life dude. Seriously. I didn’t believe the guy when he told me this, but Dan pulled out his phone and showed me pictures. Oh yeah, then we talked boxing a bit (I’m a huge fan). What picture does Dan show me next? No big deal, just him and Sugar Ray Leonard chilling. And I didn’t even get to ask Dan about his stories from the Playboy mansion.

Dan’s a booze and “nightlife” writer and former columnist for Playboy. If the publication has a distilled spirit in its title, Dan’s probably written for it. The titles of his previously published books should give you some idea of his approach to writing: Living Loaded: Tales of Sex, Salvation, and the Pursuit of the Never-Ending Happy Hour and Nobody Likes a Quitter (and Other Reasons to Avoid Rehab: The Loaded Life of an Outlaw Booze Writer.

A lot of wine writing can be either stuffy to the point of suffocation or uninspired to the point of meaninglessness. Dan’s writing avoids both of these pitfalls. He pretty much gets loaded, waits for hilarious shit to happen, and then writes it down.

I just finished reading his new book American Wino: A Tale of Reds, Whites and One Man’s Blues, which is quite a romp. If you’re going to pick up a copy when it comes out in April, I have one suggestion: Don’t read this book sober. It was likely written under the influence of one or more substances and should be read under similar influences. “But I can’t read buzzed,” you say? Yes you can. With this book, you most certainly can.

After a series of unfortunate events including the death of his brother and his girlfriend bailing, Dan sets his sights on a trans-American road trip. The goal? Well, to see new places, get drunk, meet some chicks on Tinder, and, along the way, check out some wineries from lesser-known states. (They make vino in all 50, after all.) Dan is no Master of Wine candidate. Spirits and beer are his main focus. So he decides to become a “wine expert” by meeting up with as many winemakers, and drinking as much wine, as he possibly can.

This book is not a reference guide to American wine. It is not an analysis of current winemaking trends in smaller wine-growing states. It’s a personal travel narrative littered with bottles from Nebraska, New Mexico, New Jersey, Georgia, and many places in between.

Dan keeps an open mind about wineries from all over the country, which is refreshing. As a huge fan of Virginia wine (and wines from places like Arizona, Maryland, Pennsylvania and others), I have no patience for dismissals of entire wine regions from self-absorbed oenophiles.

But Dan doesn’t blow smoke up a state’s ass either. Climate, soil, aspect, winemaking equipment and know-how, there are damn good reasons the best wines in the world come from places that have these elements all lined up. But that’s not to say darn good wine can’t come from unexpected places. The story of most famous wine regions started with someone planting vines in a spot other people thought was crummy.

Dan writes: “most of the learned folks I’ve come across are of the opinion that almost all the great domestic stuff comes from one of three places — California, Oregon, and Washington — with New York and Virginia occasionally fielding a winner now and again. As for the rest of the wine, well, they mostly think it’s shit.”

The critics come at these winemakers like rabid badgers, intent on clawing out their eyes and chomping off their privates. And while these plucky pups harbor no illusions of supplanting Napa, Tuscany, or the Rhone any time soon, they’re every bit as serious, hardworking, and innovative as the industry’s heavy hitters. And after decades of relentless abuse (or utter disregard) they just don’t give a shit what you think about them anymore.”

Like me, Dan has a blue-collar appreciation for the farmer-winemaker-underdog. Even if the wine doesn’t taste great, Dan appreciates the gumption: “That takes grit, a large helping of blind faith, and an unshakable belief in one’s ability to endure in the face of near impossible odds.”

But the book, like wine from Florida, has some serious flaws.

I’m not some pearl-clutcher who gets offended easily. (The last time I felt offended was when another metalhead criticized my love of the Polish black/death metal band Behemoth.) But Dan’s writing is often crass for crassness’ sake. Like an adolescent throwing around the c-word every time he gets a chance, Dan gets mired in his own excess. 

The guy actually writes a multi-page dialogue scene between him and his penis. No kidding. And I was in junior high the last time I heard so many references to ballsacks, nutsacks, dickwads, taints and buttholes. He frequently overplays his hand by using too much hyperbole. He compares himself to Bukowski and Dylan Thomas. Luckily for Dan, a good dose of self-deprecation saves him from coming off as a total prick.

Although this could be called a “wine book,” the wineries Dan visits get little more than a brief overview, and the actual wines get a cursory mention. Much of the time, Dan’s fantasizing about hot waitresses or reliving past jaunts. It’s fun to read, but disappointing if you’re expecting to come away with a lot of knowledge about American wine culture.

The road trip structure of the book is jumbled up by flashbacks to childhood in Philly and internal dialogue about his ex-girlfriend. Jumping back in time can be quite jarring for a reader expecting the story to move forward. For example, the chapter on Texas starts off with four pages set in Texas before shifting to 12 pages of back-story in Philly. By the time we jump back, I forgot we were in the Lone Star State. The flashbacks generally take a similar structure. Dan is driving around somewhere and, all of the sudden, we transition to the past via the “Oh, that reminds of this one time when...” method. The flashbacks are frequently funny and often vulgar, but there are way too many to keep the story moving forward.

Some of the most memorable and endearing back-story deals with Dunn’s family. Like the story about his cousin who steps on a Christmas ornament ball, ignores the wound, gets gangrene, and has to have his leg amputated below the knee. I swear, it’s funny the way Dan tells it. His overdue reunion with his mother in Philly is hilarious, touching and sad, and when Dunn deals honestly with his emotions it comes across as authentic.

The book is also packed with side bars, little diversions about particular grape varieties (not “varietals”) and wine terms. Sometimes he goes off on a completely unrelated topic, like the time he channels his inner Key & Peele and embarks on an epic rant about the awesomeness of Liam Neeson.

I obviously enjoyed the book enough to write 1,400 words about it. Even though I only hung out with Dan for a few days, I would vouch for the guy. If we were drinking and fight broke out, I’d have his back. And Dan doesn’t need anything from this lowly wordslinger, anyway. The book jacket is plastered with praise from people who actually make money from their artistic endeavors. (Ever heard of Maynard James Keenan?)

Dan is pretty damned successful as far as alcoholic beverage writers go. He ends his trip as a keynote speaker at the posh Pebble Beach Food & Wine Festival. He’s slated to speak there again this year, celebrating the launch of his book. So he clearly knows what the fuck he’s doing.

The flaws in this book? They’re like moderate doses of volatile acidity and brettanomyces, off-putting to some, but one could argue they add character. The book surely isn’t corked. As I said earlier, you should read it while consuming large quantities of wine. If you take my advice, you’ll enjoy yourself regardless.

Cheers!

New Essay Up On The Inertia - From Starved to Stoked: How Surfing Saved My Life

If you're not interested in surfing, you may not have heard of the website The Inertia. A lot of surfing media sites are full of editing errors, terrible "reporting" and lame listicles. In addition to amazing videos and pictures, The Inertia publishes a lot of solid writing as well. So I'm honored to have a new essay up on the site today called "From Starved to Stoked: How Surfing Saved My Life." In the piece, I tell the story of how my love for surfing brought me back from the brink.

The piece can be found here. I hope you enjoy it. Cheers!

Essay Published in The Inertia

I'm stoked to announce The Inertia has just published an essay I wrote a while back about chasing hurricane surf in New Jersey.

Check it out by following this link.

A Guy's Guide to Drinking Pink Wine

I've got a new essay up on The Good Men Project called "A Guy's Guide to Drinking Pink." 

There's a whole world of dry rosé out there, and it's worth exploring, especially in the summer. 

Also, this site is pretty cool and filled with a lot of diverse voices and content. A bit too many listicles for my taste, but there is a lot of thought-provoking stuff on there, so I hope you'll check it out. 

Cheers!

"Casino Moscow" Explores Economic Chaos of Post-Soviet Russia, Ukraine

When my family moved to Ukraine in 1995, I was too young to fully understand the completely fucked up economic situation. But I could see the effects everywhere: desperate people waiting in line for bread, babushkas begging for change outside every metro station, packs of half-wild dogs running through the streets and fighting.

My parents moved our family of five from the Jersey Shore to the Ukrainian capital for a one-year missionary trip. The combination of extreme culture shock and the chaotic state of affairs that defined this place and time resulted in one of the most formative years of my adolescence. My parents moved to Kyiv full-time in 1999, and we still visit frequently and hold on to a deep connection with the people of Ukraine. Having spent so much time in Eastern Europe, I was excited to finally read Matthew Brzezinski’s book Casino Moscow: A Tale of Greed and Adventure on Capitalism’s Wildest Frontier. And I was even more excited that a good third of the book dealt with Ukraine.

The book jacket explains that as a “rookie Wall Street Journal reporter,” Brzezinski “is instantly plunged into the crazed world of Russian capitalism, where corrupt Moscow bankers and American carpetbaggers preside over the greatest boom and bust in international financial history.” Brzezinski — nephew of Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski — doesn’t write in the detached economic prose of a WSJ article. He’s market savvy and explains complex economic issues, but his writing isn’t stuffy or packed with insider lingo. Instead, the book reads more like a travelogue through Russia and Ukraine, as Brzezinski recounts his nights on shitty Russian trains, his vodka-pounding sessions with Russian power brokers, how he bribes officials with cigarettes and bumps into mafia bodyguards armed with automatic guns.

Brzezinski’s description of Ukraine in the early 1990s is so poignant that it brought up memories I didn’t know I’d forgotten. When he talks about the crackly phone lines in his apartment, it reminded me of calling up friends and having a Ukrainian woman jump into the conversation when the lines got crossed. He describes living in a run-down neighborhood (as most were) near Kyiv’s weedy botanical gardens, and although he doesn’t give street names, I’m quite sure he lived in the same area as my family, Druzhby Narodiv. During this time, he explains how the old army trucks that delivered milk and pumped it from a rusty spigot into old beer bottles. I laughed aloud as I read him describe how, in Kyiv, “it was a matter of some prestige” to been seen carrying items in a plastic bag. I remember old women carrying their treasured personal belongings in plastic bags with pride, as if toting plastic was a badge of honor. They carried the bags around until the plastic stretched into shreds or disintegrated.

This was a time of fast-paced transition from post-Soviet collapse to “capitalism” and “democracy” — at least that was the idea. As Brzezinski explains, the early and mid-90s in Ukraine and Russia was a time of power-hungry oligarchs, brazen political corruption, mafia domination and economic inflation. While a few powerful locals (mostly ex-Party bosses) and a slew of Western vulture capitalists got filthy rich, the average person saw their society decay as almost every measurable standard of living dropped.

The Ukrainian people amazed me as an adolescent, as they still do today, with their unique blend of steadfastness and compassion, but Kyiv was a scary place in those early days. A man was found dead in our apartment lobby, his body face-down and his throat slit. Other Westerners constantly warned us to stay away from men who drove black Mercedes or BMWs. There was no real functioning Ukrainian media, but we heard all sorts of stories about ego-bloated mafia men beating pedestrians who refused to move out of their way as they drove their cars on the sidewalk. We American kids traded stories about which courtyards and alleyways had been sites of mafia executions. Most of this violence was brutal but targeted, centered around the flourishing organized crime scene. Still, I bought a whole bunch of knives off street vendors and began carrying two switchblades with me everywhere I went, just in case I lost one. I also carried a $20 bill, which was enough to fend off a thug or pay off a cop shaking me down for a bribe, but not enough cash to get too upset about losing.

Brzezinski didn’t escape the chaos of post-Soviet Kyiv unscathed. He recalls being hog-tied and robbed by a gangster who used the guise of a pretty woman in distress to gain access to his apartment. Brzezinski had all his shit stolen and was left unconscious but alive. Yet this relatively petty crime belies what Brzezinski sees as the real problem: “The economy was a continuous vicious circle of rip-offs, rooted in the communist premise that property belonged to no one — and was thus up for grabs by everyone.” Liberated under the flag of capitalism, only the iron-fisted had the power to grab what could be grabbed. The average citizen was left out in the cold.

 

Inflation was rampant and seemingly unpredictable, peaking at a mindboggling ten-thousand percent. When living in Kyiv, we Westerners dealt with this by carrying only American dollars and exchanging them for Ukrainian koupons only when we planned to immediately spend the money. Most vendors were more than eager to accept our American cash.

I’ll never forget the story of a young Ukrainian couple that became friends of ours. They had saved up their money for years in order to buy a modest car, a Russian-made Lada. The currency crisis eroded their savings, and their money could buy only about a pound of sausages. Families all across the former Soviet Union have similar stories.

A good portion of the book is dedicated to chronicling the rise of several New Russian oligarchs. As the government sold off public enterprises, powerful bankers were able to snatch up real estate, factories, even entire industries. And once they had snatched it all up, they bolstered the weak and corrupt state to protect their new wealth. One Russian oligarch brags to the author about how his companies are responsible for one-twentieth of Russia’s total Gross Domestic Product. The only thing comparable in American history, the author wonders, may be John D. Rockefeller, but, “there was a key difference between [the Russian oligarchs] and America’s robber barons: Rockefeller built his Standard Oil from nothing, while the oligarchs seized the assets of Soviet Russia. They had not created wealth; they had simply grabbed it.”

The author also investigates several prominent crime bosses, trying to find out how they operate within the economic and political structures of their time and place. Reading about the oligarchs and the mafia bosses, it becomes clear that the lines between mafia criminals and legitimate businessmen were illusory. Both existed in the same sectors of society at the same time, even in the same person.

In one of his many reporting trips into the Russian hinterlands, Brzezinski visits the oil fields of far northeastern Russia. Here, newly privatized companies had decided not to pay their workers or their taxes, which cripples local economies. This part of the book was perhaps the most depressing for me to read, as Brzezinski reports on the massive ecological destruction brought on by a combination of human apathy, broken-down equipment and total incompetence.  

The author also visits Chernobyl, touring the abandoned facility in a crummy “protective” suit, a radiation detection device in hand. He has some really interesting things to say about Chernobyl as a metaphor for the post-Soviet socioeconomic reality. 

Russia has changed a lot since this book was published, and I’m unsure what light this book has to shed on the current state of Russia’s capitalist experiment. Casino Moscow doesn’t have much to offer that would help understand Russia’s renewed imperial efforts in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. But I still think it’s a fascinating read in its own right, a well-researched and well-written book that delves into a critical time in Russian and Ukrainian history. 

New Post on "Welcome to the Bundle" - Hire a Damn Doula

So, I recently became a father. My wife gave birth to a baby girl two weeks ago, and I've been spending my days and nights getting to know this awesome little creature. 

The experience has been [insert any superlative-laden cliché].

Despite being tired and busy taking care of my wife and baby girl, I managed to throw together some words about the birth. 

The essay is now up on the blog Welcome to the Bundle. In the piece, I reflect on the birth process and the crucial role our doula played in the experience. 

Cheers!

My Favorite Wine Labels of the Year

“I buy wine based on the label.”

Countless friends and acquaintances have confessed this to me over the years, although few would attach their names to the quote. When I hear this admission, I respond the same way: Of course you do. Everyone does.

There’s no need to apologize. Wine labels impact us, and we respond. This is a simple, honest acknowledgement of a concept we all understand: looks matter. In a world where everything is a commodity, it is crucial that commodities appeal to our visual senses.

There’s an academic paper in here for sure, something like: Aesthetics of the Wine Label – On the Convergence of Art, Agriculture and the Consumer Mind. There are studies and consumer trends and charts to be examined. But that’s what wine companies pay consultants for.

In the meantime, let’s break it down into digestible chunks.

Alcoholic products come in bottles. A bottle of wine presents itself to the consumer in a very direct and immediate way. You’re not just purchasing fermented grape juice from a particular time, place and producer. You’re purchasing a bottle of a wine — a product, a physical object you can grip in your hand.

You’re buying the shape of the bottle, the label, the cork and the foil. All of these elements are inseparable from the overall experience of smelling and tasting the wine. In other words, the physical object and the act of consuming its contents are interconnected.

I am not in any way suggesting you should buy a bottle of wine based solely on how attractive you find its label. You’d probably end up with some seriously forgettable wine. But, on the other hand, if a wine is well-made and speaks truthfully of its time and place, why not wrap the bottle in something visual interesting?

Just like language on a wine label can be poetry, images on a wine label can be visual art. All wineries use the label to communicate with consumers, but some take the artistic aspect seriously. Perhaps the best example is Chateau Mouton-Rothschild. Every year, this first-growth Bordeaux works with a different renowned artist to create a memorable label. Past vintages have boasted paintings from Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali and many more.

I can’t afford to drink Mouton, but I came across my share of memorable wine labels this year, bottles I consider artful. Like any piece of visual artwork, different people appreciate different images. So you may hate one or more of these, and that’s fine.

But these five labels jumped out at me. They intrigued me. They piqued my interest and made me wonder about the person behind the bottle. What more can you ask of a wine label? 

I love Old World wine labels, but all six of my favorites this year hail from California. (Pictures below the fold.)

Chasing Cristobal: A New Jersey Surf Story

Cristobal charges into New Jersey waters on August 29. All photos in this post come from Harold Wintters.

“You can surf in New Jersey?”

“New Jersey has waves?”

I get these questions all the time when people ask about my lifelong passion for Garden State waves. Yes, we get waves. Good waves. But like everything worth chasing, the timing has to be right. 

Everyone seems to have an opinion of the Jersey Shore, even if they’ve never been there. Most of the people who have been to New Jersey probably visited the Shore during summer, when the beaches are packed and the air reeks of Coppertone and body spray. Here, tourists bask in the reaffirmation of their long-held stereotypes. Is the sand cramped with orange-hued sunbathers? Yes. Are there d-bags who shave their stomachs and strut around with chests puffed out? Oh, hell yes. Are there waves? Most of the time, no.

The water is calm and clean and cools the hot skin. On summer mornings, the sea is a green glass sheet. While everyone tans on the beach and wades into the shallows, surfers linger around, waiting for something — anything — to happen. Even though it’s gorgeous and sunny out, surfers struggle through the summer months.

But when a tropical storm charges up the Atlantic, everything changes.

Street Dogs of Kyiv: Part 1

A frequent sight in Kyiv, Ukraine: women taking care of street dogs. Photo courtesy of my father, James A. Baker.

Street Dogs of Kyiv: Part 1
Scavengers and Charity Cases

It didn’t make any sense. I was in one of Europe’s major capital cities, and the streets were overrun with packs of wild dogs. From the Metro underground to the trails along the banks of the Dnipr, they owned the streets.

These were mutts in the truest sense. It takes years and generations of careful selection to arrive at a “pure bred” dog, but throw them all out into the street, and it’s not long before they all start to look alike. These Kyiv street dogs displayed distinct features that I hadn’t seen anywhere else.

They were solid animals, maybe 50 pounds, with powerful bear-like shoulders. Through wild breeding they’d garnered the most beneficial attributes of a hundred different breeds. The Kyiv street dog had the snout of a hound, the trim and bristly fur of a German shepherd, the large paws of a retriever. When needed, the dog could run like a greyhound and attack prey like a wolf.

Kyiv is a bitter cold place for half the year. I wondered how the street dogs survived in such an extreme environment. “They’re scavengers,” my mother said when I asked her that question. “It’s what they do.”

In the mid-1990s, Kyiv was a gritty and unforgiving place. How did one scavenge in Kyiv? If it could be eaten, Ukrainians didn’t throw it away. We’re talking about a place where people gelatinize pig fat and turn it into sala, a delicacy to be sliced and served on black bread.

I soon found out that, like most beings on the knife-edge of death, the street dogs survived on charity.

Kyiv’s drunks were the main providers of food for the street dog: scraps of sausage casing, dried calamari or the butt end of a baton loaf. The street drunks of Kyiv are some of the toughest, cold-hardened individuals I’ve ever seen, and I was impressed by the way they cared for the dogs.

These Kyivski drifters couldn’t get any lower on the human chain. They were all suffering through various stages of mental and physical disrepair. Many of them were missing legs or arms or parts of their faces, the results of war, poverty, cold or alcohol, combined with the lack of shelter and medical care. These drunks knew what it was like to be on the wrong end of a cop’s boot. They knew what it was like to sleep on concrete and ice. Bless them, they were among the few who took pity on the castaway dogs.

Babushkas, too. Each courtyard had a babushka, a self-appointed guardian who ruled over her little realm like a wise and wrinkled queen. In spring, she’d tend the sunflowers. In autumn, she’d sweep away fallen leaves with a broom made of dried sticks. If you got into a fight in her courtyard, she’d come out shaking her cane at you. If you smashed a bottle on the ground, you were likely to catch that cane on the wrist. But no babushka would allow a dog to starve to death in her courtyard.

My mother, who befriended many a babushka during her more than ten years in Kyiv, said babushkas viewed street dogs as members of the courtyard community. “It was amazing to me to see a little old babushka go up to a bunch of savage street dogs,” my mother said, recalling our babushka in the Druzhby Narodiv neighborhood. “She knew all the dogs. She’d talk to them all — make the dogs bow to her, really.”

Street dogs understood kindness, and they relished what little they received. Most of the time they just got kicked in the teeth and run over by tram cars.

One winter day I was walking around the Independence Square neighborhood with my parents and siblings. We were cold and hungry so we walked up to this little vending window on a side street known for selling the best sosiski v’tyestye (essentially hot dogs encased in dough and fried in peanut oil). Eating them was putting your stomach at significant risk, but they were so delicious. Ahead of us in line, an old man in soiled clothes counted out his bills and bought two sausages. I watched him cross the street toward a street dog who was sitting on his back legs.

The man bent over and held one out for the dog, who ate it right off his hand. Then the man walked on down the street and the dog stayed put.

I bought two sosiskis, but only ate one. I pocketed the second and brought it back to the courtyard. I placed it on the ground in front of me. I didn’t have to wait long until a street dog scuffled up with its tail wagging.